Scars
by Manzy
Summary: What if John and Sherlock had met before, only neither remembered it? A discussion of Sherlock's troubled past stirs memories in John. Rated M for drug use and implied sexiness, but nothing explicit. S/J, established relationship, one-shot.


Sherlock and John lie atop John's duvet, breaths gradually slowing. The warm light of a late May afternoon wraps both of them in a comfortable glow, and except for their breathing, the flat is quiet. John, recovering a bit, rolls onto his side and brushes Sherlock's shoulder with light kisses. The other man manages a light moan of satisfaction; John smiles and runs a hand down Sherlock's limp arm.

Sherlock smiles delicately. "Is it your medical training, Doctor Watson, that gives you the knowledge on how to just exactly turn me into strawberry gelatin?"

John smiles into Sherlock's grey eyes. "Strawberry, specifically?"

Sherlock closes his eyes and inhales deeply. "It is the most superior flavour."

John shakes his head and decides to let that one go, filing away Sherlock's flavour preference for his next run to the market. "To answer your question, no, I don't think they covered this particular operation at Bart's."

"Pity. It would do Doctor Hooper a world of good, I believe."

John giggles, and the laughter passes into easy silence. John props himself up on one elbow to admire Sherlock, stretched out languidly and without a trace of self-consciousness on the bed next to him. Sherlock, for his part, closes his eyes and enjoys the sensation of John lightly brushing his fingers up and down his arm.

Sherlock feels those fingers come to rest in the crook of his elbow and hold there, for longer than usual. He also feels John shift position slightly, as if to get a better look at Sherlock's arm. The smile fades from his face. John has so far refrained from asking about what his medical eye has surely noticed, but Sherlock knows they will have to address this eventually.

He takes a deep breath and opens his eyes. "I wasn't lying, you know."

John's eyes rake up Sherlock to meet his gaze, but he doesn't respond.

"To Lestrade. I am clean. I have been for the better part of two years."

John nods and looks again at Sherlock's elbow, where only the faintest traces of scarring from track marks remain. If he wasn't a doctor, he wouldn't even know they were there.

"Sherlock…why?" he asks, more statement than question. Sherlock knows what he means without further elaboration, appreciates John's economy of words. He stares at the ceiling as he responds.

"As you know, John, my mind rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most obscure cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my proper element. But I cannot abide routine, and in the days before I set myself up as a consulting detective, if I did not have mental stimulation—"

"—you found that the needle brought you what you couldn't get otherwise." John finishes for him.

"You cannot know, John, how transcendentally stimulating and clarifying…" he trails off, feeling rather than seeing John's obvious disapproval. He swallows. "But I am clean. No cocaine in almost two years, and you know I've been off cigarettes for over six months."

John nods, running a thumb lightly over the scars. "I'm sorry I didn't know you back then. Maybe I could have helped."

At that, Sherlock sits up and wraps John in a hug. Dearest John, the soldier, the doctor—_let me help you_ never far from his lips. That Sherlock, the self-diagnosed sociopath, should have such a man in his life—it was a constant puzzle that Sherlock never tires of attempting to solve.

John returns the hug, squeezing his eyes shut at the thought of his brilliant Sherlock sliding a sharp syringe into his thin arm, just to feel the addictive rush of electric poison coursing through his veins. How many times? With whom? Did he ever go too far? He shakes that thought away and nestles a hand into Sherlock's hair. This Sherlock, _his_ Sherlock, is OK.

They both hang there, more on the tip if each man's tongue, until John breaks the silence with "Do you want to shower first, or shall I?"

Sherlock laughs at this bit of domestic incongruity, and takes John up on his offer.

As Sherlock heads downstairs, John falls back onto the duvet and sighs. It is so hard to believe that the brilliant Sherlock Holmes would have resorted to drugs. He remembers his days as an junior doctor at Bart's, all the ODs that came through the A&E, the junkies, the desperate, the hopeless, the lost, the dying, and to think that Sherlock had anything in common with…

Suddenly John shoots upright, goosebumps rising on his flesh, the warm sunshine cold and stark against his now-clammy skin.

John remembers.

XXX

It was almost a decade ago. John was a first year junior doctor at Bart's, working his rotation in the A&E. The hours were long and the work exhausting, but something about it was also invigorating, exciting—John had certainly enjoyed his stint in the A&E far more than his psych or (_blimey_) pediatric rotations.

On this particular day, he stumbled in on three hours' sleep to make it to rounds in the nick of time. His attending physician, a Doctor Bruce, took the interns speedily through the cases that had come in the night before.

"25-year-old male, GSW to the right thigh, received two units O-Neg and thirty stitches in the leg. Brought in hallucinatory and disoriented-Doctor Trevelyan, after reviewing his chart, what narcotics has this patient likely ingested, and what are the possible complications?"

Doctor Trevelyan—a young colleague in John's year whose interests lay in neurology and not emergency work, stumbled through his answer. John let his attention drift to the handcuffs that held the sedated patient to his hospital bed. _Best to get the criminal element off the streets before they do any real damage_, he thought to himself. _Good to know I can help with that, even a little._

Next patient. "34-year-old female brought in by family, reported sudden onset tonic-clonic seizures upon waking. Family reports no epileptic history. CBC returns normal except high liver enzymes. Doctor Watson, what is the next test you run and the medication you prescribe?"

Trevelyan shoots John a glare—he would have preferred the epilepsy question—but rounds were capricious that way. John straightened and looked Doctor Bruce in the eye. "I'd order a 24-hour EEG since the seizure presented upon waking. Prescription would likely be Dilantin…except…"

"Except?" the older physician prompted.

"…except Dilantin can react badly in liver-compromised patients. Better choice would be Levetiracetam, 500mg twice daily."

"Nicely done, Watson." Doctor Bruce quickly moved on, and John knew to enjoy the warmth of a right answer only briefly, as a brutal one could be coming at any moment.

The next patient was in a separate room—good private insurance, clearly moneyed. The interns crowded around the bed, and John could see the vital sign readings on the monitors. Heart rate very high, BP elevated, febrile, brain patterns disjoint, blood oxygen dangerously low—_great, another rich junkie._

"21-year-old male, history of drug-related activity, presenting with symptoms of cocaine overdose. Doctor Musgrave, what are the symptoms of chronic cocaine usage, and how do these symptoms change as the strength of the cocaine solution increases?"

As Doctor Musgrave gave her reply, John scanned the patient. Under the crisp hospital sheets, the patient was thin as glass, with a thatch of black curls peeking out from underneath the covers. He was covered in a sheen of feverish sweat, and though sleeping, he seemed restless, agitated. Despite himself and his usual disdain for junkies and the criminal classes, John found himself worried for this young man. Chronic cocaine use rarely ended well.

Just then, another entered the room. He was a portly man, tall but quite heavyset, his drawn face and full head of black hair giving him away as a likely relative of the man in the bed. He stared at the group of young doctors as if reading them all like the pages of The Daily Telegraph.

"Rounds. I see." He nodded and pushed past Doctor Bruce to stand by the bedside.

Doctor Bruce cleared his throat. "Sir, we don't normally allow family in the room during rounds."

"That's quite all right, Doctor," the man answered, looking not at Doctor Bruce but at the pale figure in the bed.

"Sir, I really must insist-"

The man turned and stared. "I will not be leaving my brother's bedside. If you choose to argue, doctor, I'd be more than happy to advise the entirety of your student group as to why you continually give Doctor Musgrave the easiest questions in rounds, and what, exactly, she did last night to continue earning that privilege."

Doctor Bruce gaped, and Doctor Musgrave—Rita, as John knew her—turned a hideous shade of cerise. The portly man nodded. "Now, I believe you're done in this room, right, Doctor Bruce?"

Doctor Bruce nodded quickly and the entire group filed out. John lagged a bit behind, until it was just he, the patient and the portly man—the patient's brother—in the room. The brother didn't seem to object to his presence, so he lingered. A mobile phone—_bloody irritating invention_—rang out, and the man pulled it from his pocket.

"Yes sir? Yes, I'll be back shortly, sir…I understand, sir, this in no way impedes my work on the Al Qaeda initiatives…" There was a long pause, and the man let out a ragged sigh. "Worse this time, sir. Touch and go. No, we don't know yet…possibly. Thank you, sir." He hung up and noticed John standing there.

"See a lot of overdoses, I imagine?" the man offered by way of conversation.

John blinked. "Yes, I suppose so."

"Lots of chronic users?"

"Yes, unfortunately."

The man stared down at his brother, who lay twitching and moaning as he came slowly out of sedation. "Do any of them ever stop?"

John wrestled with the truth, then decided on the comforting lie. "Sometimes. If they get help, and have a strong support system, friends, family…"

The man let out a humorless laugh. "I see," he offered, but did not elaborate.

The patient stirred, clearly waking, and John realized he'd better catch up with the group. "Good luck to you," he offered, to which the brother replied, "I believe we'll need it."

As John left the room, he could make out the hoarse baritone voice of the patient, waking and croaking out, "Oh, for God's sake. What are you doing here, you imbecile?"

XXX

The sound of the shower splashing downstairs jolts John out of his memories. The entire scene takes only moments to flash across John's consciousness. He sits in bed, gasping. That patient—that common, run of the mill junkie, the one he'd been certain was destined for a bad end—

That had been Sherlock.

John trembles. All those years ago, the patient in that bed had been the genius consulting detective and the love of John's life, committing slow suicide as a confirmed drug abuser and lashing out at his brother. And John—the _doctor_, for God's sake-had simply walked away.

He leaps out of bed, throws on his t-shirt and shorts, and races down the stairs.

He tears open the bathroom door—Sherlock is reciting the Periodic Table to himself in the shower—and flings back the shower curtain. Sherlock stares at him, stopping at Strontium, hair slick with conditioner, as the steam mixes with the tears John hasn't realized he's shedding.

"John?"

John breaks. "I almost lost you, you idiot. I almost lost you and I hadn't even found you yet!"

And John throws himself around Sherlock, nearly knocking them both over, but Sherlock catches him, and kisses him, and the hot shower water soaks through John's pajamas and John cannot hold Sherlock tightly enough and Sherlock is soapy and clean and John needs him closer, needs to have him and take him in and never ever again let him go, because Sherlock is _his_ and he has _found_ him and he has _not_ lost him and he will_ never_ lose him, not now, not_ ever_, not ten years ago in a hospital bed at Bart's, not to serial killers and not to assassins and not to, _never_ to, the hateful needle and the seven-percent-solution.

By the time the hot water finally runs out they are gasping and entwined on the floor of the tub. Sherlock lazily turns the faucet to stop the water and they simply sit together, dripping, half-lounging, in a tight embrace on the slick porcelain.

It is Sherlock's turn to ask _why_, and John, in a shaking voice, shares the memory. Sherlock closes his eyes in a long blink, and tells John his side of the memory, including two turns in a rehab clinic and, finally, the use of a defibrillator to restart his heart in the back of an ambulance. John very nearly breaks again at that, but Sherlock nuzzles him and continued.

"That was it. Lestrade had figured out that I might be a crazy junkie, but I was a _smart_ crazy junkie and was worth keeping on call. The cases started coming in regularly, and I found the work. I used for a little while longer, but not much, and after the business with Mrs Hudson in Florida, I gave it up entirely." He presses a kiss to John's wet forehead. "I assure you, John, never again. I don't need that anymore. I have something better."

"But Sherlock," John swallows, "what happens when you get bored? What about when you don't have your something better, when the work, I dunno, dries up?"

"I wasn't talking about the work," Sherlock answered, looking into John's eyes. "I said, I have something _better_."

And John looked at Sherlock, down to his arm and his white scars, back up to his grey eyes and dark curls, and knew that it was the truth.

A while later, when they had dried off and mopped the floor and John is reading the paper and Sherlock is reviewing case files, John suddenly looks up.

"Mycroft was a real tactless git back then, wasn't he?"

Sherlock smiles. "He has mellowed somewhat, hasn't he?"

"I guess having the assistant, rather than being the assistant, makes you less brittle, eh?"

"That," Sherlock nods, "and the extra four stone wasn't doing him any favours either."

John laughs.

"Of course, he's still a git," Sherlock adds.

"Just a more tactful one."

"Tact is just a nice word for dishonesty."

"Tact is clearly something the younger Holmes has yet to master."

"I'm thirsty, John. Why haven't you put the tea on?"

"Very funny."

But John, though he rolls his eyes, gets up to put the kettle on. And as he does so, he brushes a finger along Sherlock's arm. The scars are there—would likely always be—but the healing is happening. He is certain.

He is a doctor, after all.


End file.
